Interview: Mobina Galore - Groezrock 2017

Written by David Marote

Mobina Galore, a band name that oozes of James Bond alike namedropping, but there's plenty of Mobina for everyone. Jenna and Marcia combine their talents on guitar and drum together to form a Canadian powerchord punk combo that will send listeners straight into a moshpit from the first note. So when Mobina Galore graced the Watch Out stage at Groezrock 2017, RMP Magazine just had to have a nice chat with them over a glass of wine in the searing sun.

Hello,

Welcome to Groezrock, first time here. How was the show?

Marcia : Awesome!

Jenna : Awesome, probably my favorite show i ever played. I was out there kind of watching people file in prettty much right on top of our first song. I was thinking to myself, allright this one is up there for one of my favorite shows. Great response, so it was cool.

But you're also doing a small acoustic set at the American Socks stand, what can we expect from that set?

Jenna : Well, who knows. We never do acoustic, it's like very rare for us to do that. We've only done it maybe twice in the past, a couple of months ago back in Canada. Now that we've like got that set over with i'm just excited to get out there, play a couple of songs and i don't know, if i fuck it up, like whatever. It's not a big deal.

Marcia : Little more casual, not as much pressure.

You've recently released your new album, Feeling Disconnected. And the album title pretty much covers the load. Songs about detachment, feeling disconnected. How did the album come to live?

Jenna : It was an unintentional themed album. We've had a collection of songs that we wrote over the last couple of years. With the amount of touring we've done and travelling we've done it kind of made his way into all of our songs. It came all together quite unintentionally. When we finished the album looking for a title we were looking through the lyrics. When you think about it from a different perspective you kind of remove yourself from it and find what the theme is. And it was just like feeling disconnected just kind of clicked right away. There's this theme on every song of the record.

I don't think we could write an intentional album that has a theme to it. I feel like it would be too much pressure. Some people are really good at concept albums. But i don't think that's us. Because we are together so much time, we experience the same things. We write from a different perspective and when they come together it kind of creates the same energy from both ends.

Feeling Disconnected was produced by John Paul Peters, who produced bands as Propagandhi and Comeback Kid. Has his touch have an influence on Feeling Disconnected?

Marcia :

He's incredible. As soon as you go into the studio it's basically like he's a member of the band. He is so excited about everything. He has so many ideas, but he's also like, hey what do you think about this. Next song he'll come up with something else. He's great at like harmonies and back up vocals.

Jenna : Just little tricks in the studio too. How to set things up. He's so miticulious. It will take us just a whole day to set up the microphones on the amp. No, take it back a little... But it works like right.

Marcia : He's on board and he just always takes it up to the next level.

Mobina Galore hails from Winnipeg, Heart Of The Continent. Home to some of my favorite artists, The Weakerthans, Propagandhi. But you have a song about Vancouver, which city has your preference?

Jenna : People are always like, oh, they're from Vancouver because we have a song called Vancouver. When we were writing the album we already had some songs. We've deciced we were going to spend some weeks in Vancouver and just stay there with friends and write for a couple of weeks. So we've decided to go to Vancouver. That song specificially had all the verses to it that i had written but i didn't had a chorus. We wanted to bring the chorus to this uplifting space. So Marcia ended up writing the chorus on the way to Vancouver. About that experience. It was just very relevant to Vancouver at that time. Vancouver was that place for us where we were finalising and getting tracks together for the record.

Marcia : People then always think that we're moving to Vancouver. But it is beautiful place that we love to hang out.

The European tour has been going a while now, has Europe welcomed you back on this tour?

Marcia : Amazing, Europe is our favorite place to tour. It's beautiful and the hospitality. We've got a bottle of wine here. It's really sunny outside, i can barely think right now. People are just like so excited about music here. They'll pass a poster on a bar wall and see Mobina Galore and be like, ok, i'm going to look that up and if i like them i'll might go to a show. Back home that's not really how, people don't pay attention to new bands in Canada and US. It's a lot harder to get your foot in the door. We just love it here. This is our fourth time touring here. We've been averaging twice a year, maybe knock it up to three.

You recently toured with Against Me, one of the bands you looked up to. How has it been?

Marcia : It was incredible. It was a total dream. They are such lovely people. We were a little bit nervous because people always say you shouldn't meet your heroes. Because they will never live up to what you think. We didn't know what to expect. It was just like from the moment we met. It was probably Laura that we met first. She just walked up into our dressing room. The whole tour we got along so well. Really inspiring to play shows with them everyday. We play before them so we better

like live up to it. It feels like they really did push us to do better.

Next to Against Me, another influence is The Distillers, is this the main influence to your vocal style or other influences you want to mention?

Jenna : I think that's the most difficult question to answer. Like some bands you hear them and you can take three bands that they sound like. I don't feel we have that in anyway. Vocally for sure it is where The Distillers come into place. I just wanted to be able to scream and it ended up working really well for me. Musically, instrumentally and stuff like that, i don't know. It's so hard because we both have different influences. We're powerchord punk, we don't do any fancy shit.

Marcia : It's hard to say because you listen to so much different music and you don't know what seeps in where. We can't pinpoint, for us anyway. We can't say that we tried to write like this person.

Or tried to make a song like this person. You just like listen to like these twenty bands on a regular basis and probably they all seep in a bit a little bit into your playing.

Mobina Galore is a two piece, guitar and drums and combined vocals. Is this your favorite way of playing or do you feel a certain limitation to it?

Marcia : It's kind of the only way. When we first started playing music together we played with a thrird person. She played keyboard, we never had a bass player. She didn't want to play anymore.

We were open to finding new people to play music with but we couldn't. Before we knew it we had written an album, and we recorded an album and it was just the two of us. Now we're like to far in it. We're comfortable with the music that we are producing and the sound we're putting out. At least in the foreseeable future we don't plan to change it. Or grow the band in that way.

What's next for Mobina Galore, any plans regarding tours or releases in the nearby future?

Jenna : after this tour we'll play Punk Rock Bowling in Las Vegas and we're playing Fest in Florida. It's kind of our first doing this bigger festival stages. We're doing a North American tour in the summer. And already planning on coming back here in like October or November. Anything we come here, we're just right away planning to came back here in the next six months.

We've been here twice a year, people want you to come back. We're giving the next couple of years 100% to touring.